Stories and News

Stories and News No. 1276 Once upon a time a tooth. Here is what remains of Patrice Émery Lumumba . Apparently , underlining and highlighting the adverb with a vehement bold. The news inspiring this piece is precisely the delivery to the heirs of the surviving remains of the former premier of the Republic of Congo, the first democratically elected for forty years, as well as activist and political leader, assassinated on the seventeenth January of '61 with the demonstrated complicity of the usual foreign powers. In a word, a tooth . The hero's tooth. A gold tooth from the brave champion of Congolese independence. This is all that was placed by the Belgian Prime Minister in the hands of Patrice's son sixty-one years after his death, accompanying the symbolic gesture with words that admit the “moral responsibilities” of their country and at the same time recognize the “serious wounds inflicted” and the “remarkable Lumumba's value for the independence of the Congo”. Of

Stories and News No. 1275 Imagine what is happening in the UK, which is not so far from what is happening in our country, like one of those science fiction stories of the last century, which anticipated the craziness of the future to make us reflect on the current ones. Is there a line, okay? A long queue of kids, all under the age of fourteen, according to the real story. Like their peers in the rest of the world, they are constantly on the way to a tomorrow they ignore, or who desperately want to be better than yesterday and certainly not worse than today. Under those looks, some angry, others frightened and still others absent – which is the worst thing, they have the same superhuman dreams and the identical, impossible aspirations of any child born with an undervalued dose of luck in his pocket. That's right, I say it from experience. Most of the time it just takes a lot longer for the tenderness that remains to come out and be admired. At the end of the line, to direct tho

Stories and News No. 1274 For more than twenty-five years, by now, almost thirty, and closely alongside the artistic one, I have been following another path, accompanying the journey of young people of all ages, whether or not they are still such by birth. Most of the time – armed by theater, imagination and curiosity, but above all stories personally experienced, I wait for them entering the room where due to more or less striking derailments from the “normal” path. But we could also define it socially tolerated or simply ordered and visible. Whatever they say, at the end of the day they are just kids like the others, I repeat it to myself every day and they show it to me as well. In addition to the individual, personal problems which they face on a daily basis, like their peers who have had greater luck with the choices of destiny, they are also forced to meet obstacles that in reality are not random at all, but artfully constructed. Now I am not a sociologist, in this regard I sp

Stories and News No. 1273 Well, you know, this is stronger than me. When I read or listen to a statement that strikes me in a particular way, I feel the extreme need to imagine the scene. To see it, even relive it as if we were in a cinema or at the theater - which for me are still a kind of magic - or even better for my tastes, reread it as a story. So, I try to put together the various pieces, those connected directly to the scene, see in this case the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but also indirectly, like the recent publication of a book that explains in detail how China - like the US, Russia itself, but also France and the UK - finance projects especially in developing countries in Asia and Africa, disproportionately benefiting the political groups of presidents or prime ministers. With the result of increasing corruption and instability in the nations that receive the funds, making them further dependent on the allegedly generous exploiters... oops, I meant the subsidiaries. A

Stories and News No. 1272 Dear Aldous Huxley , come on, let's not exaggerate. I say this with all due respect and admiration. You know, The New World is still today one of my favorite dystopian science fiction novels, extremely topical, but despite what you wrote in one of your essays in the 1958 - and no one can deny how prophetic and modern it is, that is an observation valid only speaking in general, right? In this actual case, given the timing, it would be incredibly sensational, don't you think? Yes, all right, I also read the recent warning about homophobic and racist media reports about the Monkeypox virus, guilty of pointing the finger particularly at LGBTI and African people. But these are just the usual bad apples, and besides, try to be understanding. After what we have been through in the last three years, facing the nightmare of a new epidemic, it is normal to react in a not very lucid way. At the beginning I mean, it's clear. Yes, of course, I understand w

Stories and News No. 1271 I would like to believe you. I do like I used to. I think that this naive as well as childish desire is paradoxically still in me, albeit with a feeble and now completely devoid of backbone voice. I think I'm not the only one, but as a child everything seemed easier about it: the good guys on one side and the bad ones on the other. And for those of my generation it wasn't hard to choose which side to take. Because the brave and peaceful cowboys only wanted to graze cattle and raise children, while the treacherous “Indians” shaved heads and kidnapped young women; because American and British soldiers, like future superheroes, faced evil, personified by the sinister Nazis in the last century, and saved Europe; because James Bond was fighting for his Majesty, but also world peace, while Russian spies were literally bred to destroy everything that was not communist. Communism, yes. By those on the left, especially radicals or extremists, who are often n